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Her family enrolled in a trial program called Getting on Track in Time, which targets children identified by teachers as having severe behavioural problems.

''It helped … me to love my son again instead of being angry at him all the time for misbehaving,'' she says.

This and other projects are part of a new wave of treatments for the very young, seeking the holy grail of medicine: prevention rather than cure.

And, increasingly, scientists are looking to even earlier points in a child's life for social triggers for conditions as diverse as depression and arthritis.

Emerging scientific research is also raising the question of whether adversity - in particular poverty - could change our most fundamental genetic characteristics, a process known as epigenetics.

More than one in six Australian children live in poverty, according to research released this week by the Australian Council of Social Service.

Professor Michael Kobor runs a laboratory at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he is trying to unlock the secrets of how early life adversity influences our genes.

His research was published last week in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as part of a collection of papers on the long-term health effects of childhood adversity.

The study, of more than 14,000 human genes from 92 adults, found variations in the DNA methylation - thought to influence how genes are expressed as characteristics - were linked with demographic and environmental factors, and stress. In particular they found a link to socio-economic status in early life - but not later life.

''Somehow this early life experience … gets under the skin, to basically help sculpt the epigenetic markers, and that seems to be sticking with us for a long time,'' he says.

Also in the journal was a study of more than a 1000 people that found low income, particularly from the prenatal period to the second year of life, was linked to a doubled risk of early-onset adult high blood pressure and arthritis.

The researchers speculated that in infancy people are particularly sensitive to stress, which can cause a proinflammatory state and extensive changes to blood-flow and the function of the chemical messengers that help cells communicate.

''Over-reaction of the immune system seems to be linked to socio-economic status in early life, and that's potentially not a good thing, because we want the immune system to be in check, not going bonkers,'' Kobor says.

Another paper found children who spent their first years of life in orphanages were more likely to have reduced executive functioning in their brains; yet another that children who had subordinate social status in kindergarten experienced more behavioural problems and poorer academic outcomes.

Findings such as these are politicising researchers like never before, says the chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia, Michael Moore.

''The challenge for people who look at social determination in areas like health … is that they don't fit into the discourse of modern politics,'' he says.

Moore - a former ACT independent MP who served as health minister under a Liberal government - says the black and white nature of policymaking means people who flourish despite poor circumstances are held up as arguments against the need for social equality.

A Senate committee is holding an inquiry into the issue and almost all of the 21 published submissions, largely from researchers and health promotion groups, recommend measures to tackle unequal distribution of wealth.

But Kobor is hesitant to recommend public policy on the basis of early genetic work, although he is working with a PhD student examining that very prospect.

''Somehow the social environment is correlated with these epigenetic markers but the question is: what does it mean? And I think we are not yet close to answering that question,'' he says. ''It's hard at this point to even really say … whether these changes are positive or negative.''

Megan is just relieved to have had some help.

''I didn't want Jayson to grow up like me,'' she says. ''He is changing the way he approaches things, changing his behaviour, and I think now he is going to grow up differently.''